Paul Hughes

Neoplatonist Stew Paul Hughes

This book leaves few denominational toes untrodden. An objective review of Church history demonstrates that Christian theology soon went astray from that laid out in the New Testament, as the Fathers of the Church lost their understanding of sound interpretive principles. Theology began to be supplemented, then co-opted and corrupted, by Greek philosophy: namely, Middle Platonism, then Neoplatonism, and later Theurgy. The external, heterodox doctrines derived from Pagan philosophy were embraced by the Eastern Church, carried into the Western Church, repeatedly revived in the Medieval Church in the form of Scholasticism, Mysticism, and Catholic Church dogma, and re-popularized by modern theologians to the present day. The negative influence of these heterodoxies is manifest in modern elements of Mysticism, Contemplative Prayer, Sacramentalism, Sacerdotalism, the so-called New Theology, and emphasis on Universalism, Liberation, Unity, Mystical Union, apotheosis, divinization, and "spiritual formation."